Discussion Questions 5

Module 10 info

There is not a reading in the text book for UAV or sUAS (Drones and their related systems). 

The term drone spans a number of different kinds of aircraft including fixed wing, helicopter, quadcopter, and various multi rotary devices. The fixed wing (Links to an external site.)  remotely operated aeronautical vehicles can takeoff under their own power or be launched into the air and there also various recovery options. Fixed wing drones are mostly operated by the military for reconnaissance and observation or as weapon platforms. See the Predator (Links to an external site.)  and Reaper as  examples for the Air Force and the Pioneer  (Links to an external site.) as an example for the Navy. Just recently the Navy announced drone refuelin (Links to an external site.) g operations for the F18 as another application of remote technologies. 

Not all of the emerging technologies are unmanned. The eVTOL is an electric vertical take off and landing aircraft. See the Passenger Air Vehicle (Links to an external site.)  from Aurora a company acquired by Boeing. Other examples are under development as well. It is well documented that available propulsion systems have been the main factor in resulting aircraft design. Piston engines yielded propeller aircraft, turbine technologies resulted in Jet Aircraft the culminated in The Boeing 747. Currently electric propulsion is resulting in new aircraft designs as well. Drones are mainly electrical powered and Joby Aviation (Links to an external site.)  is developing that technology in the U.S.  Pipistrel Aircraft (Links to an external site.)  in Slovenia is also developing electric aircraft for the flight training market and their Panthera line includes a fuel powered model , a hybrid model, and a full electric model. United aAirlines has also expressed interest in using electric aircraft for regional transportation. See Heart Aerospace (Links to an external site.) .

Pure electric aircraft do not, of course, burn fuel but rather store energy in batteries to power the motors. Battery technology has been a limiting factor due to weight and safety concerns. But their are many promising technologies on the horizon. A recent NPR Science Friday broadcast discussed the future of battery power. Go to the link below for the July 16, 2021 episodes and the New Battery Technology is the second Listen button (there are a few items in the discussion before the battery discussion begins at 12m28s.     Science Friday (Links to an external site.)

UAV's can be remotely piloted (UAS) or autonomous. The remotely piloted drone system includes a current FAA certified remote pilot, an observer, and a control operator. Autonomous vehicles are programmed and perform preprogrammed tasks like mapping, tracking ground objects, agricultural spraying or seed planting et cetera. Vertical Technologies (Links to an external site.)  is a company that specializes in fully autonomous, commercial grade drones. Here are several videos and images that show the vertical technologies DeltaQuad Pro autonomous VTOL drone in action.  Delta Quad (Links to an external site.)

Actual aircraft are being converted into remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles as well: Bloomberg (Links to an external site.)

Reliable Robotics (Links to an external site.)  has several instructive videos of their automation of a Cessna 172 Skyhawk (Links to an external site.) , the most popular training aircraft ever produced and still in production and the Cessna 208 Caravan (Links to an external site.) , one of the most frequently used cargo aircraft (thanks to FedEX)

My experience with drones began with a toy helicopter that was camera-less and cheap and difficult to fly and I quickly upgraded to a DJI Phantom 3 (Links to an external site.)  that I flew for several years even taking it to Ireland to capture some video of spots in that country: unfortunately the Cliffs of Mohr  (Links to an external site.) is a drone no fly zone without a permit. I upgraded my Phantom 3 to a Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 (Links to an external site.)  and that is the current platform I am flying. I also have a Power Up (Links to an external site.)  remote platform for small balsa wood and paper airplanes that is controlled by a smart phone. I intend to purchase a DJI Mavic Air 2 (Links to an external site.)  soon for video applications and just ordered a DJI FPV for research and fun: here is a video that shows some of its features   DJI FPV    (Links to an external site.) In addition to to an airline transport pilot (ATP (Links to an external site.) ) certificate, a flight instructor certificate (asel, amel, instruments), advanced ground instructor certificate and private glider pilot certificate I recently obtained my Remote Pilot Certificate (Links to an external site.)   in order to be able to operate drones commercially. 

Drone Related Acronyms

UAS Unmanned Aircraft Systems sUAS small (under 55 pounds) Unmanned Aircraft Systems UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle IACRA Integrated Airman Certificate and/or Rating Application System FTN FAA Tracking Number UAG Unmanned Aircraft General knowledge test (small) LOS Line of Sight BVLOS Beyond Visual Line of Sight AAM Advanced Air Mobility UAM Urban Air Mobility

sUAS Drone Manufacturers: Links to Websites

Here are some companies that manufacture and sell drones. These drone manufacturers have products that very from toys up to movie grade commercial and professional vehicles. The price point very significantly as well and usually are a function of the camera quality and other components, a  built in screen for the flight controller, obstacle avoidance sensors, et cetera.

UAV Factory (Links to an external site.)

DJI   (Links to an external site.) Da-Jiang Innovations

Holy Stone (Links to an external site.)  

Autel (Links to an external site.)

Brinc Drones (Links to an external site.)  

Potensic (Links to an external site.)

Ruko (Links to an external site.)

Parrot (Links to an external site.)

Federal Aviation Administration Regulations, Information, and Remote Pilot Certification

FAA UAS information (Links to an external site.)

FAA Drone Zone (Links to an external site.)

FAA CFR Part 107 (Links to an external site.)

Advisory Circular Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Small UAS) PDF available.

FAA AC 107-2A (Links to an external site.)

Declaration of Compliance Process for Remote Identification of Unmanned Aircraft

FAA Advisory Circular AC 89-2 (Links to an external site.)

Drone Degree Programs, Organizations and Trade Shows

Drone Zone (Links to an external site.)  Drone information and Reviews

DroneX (Links to an external site.)   UK Drone Trade Show and Conference

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems AUVSI (Links to an external site.)

Embry Riddle Aeronautical University  B.S. in Unmanned Aircraft Systems Science

Module 11 info

Read Chapter 14 Principles of Airline Scheduling in the Wensveen (2016) textbook.

 

Watch the Following Videos: 

Airline Scheduling - Maths Delivers:  Ops Research (Links to an external site.)

How Airlines Schedule Flights:   Wendover Video (Links to an external site.)

How Airlines Decide Where to Fly:  Wendover Video (Links to an external site.)

The Plane Highway in the Sky:  Wendover Video (Links to an external site.)

How Overnight Shipping Works:  Wendover Video (Links to an external site.)

How Amazon's Super-Complex Shipping System Works:   Wendover Video (Links to an external site.)

New Start Up for Jet Blue:     Breeze Airways (Links to an external site.)

Highlight Material from the Scheduling Chapter

Airline scheduling can be defined as the art of designing system-wide flight patterns that provide optimum public service, in both quantity and quality, balanced with factors such as:

· Equipment maintenance. A separate maintenance-routing plan must be drawn up for each type of aircraft in the fleet in accordance with schedule needs

· Crews. Crew routings must be followed to maintain efficient monthly utilization

· Facilities. Gate space on airport ramps must be adequate.

· Terminal capacity, including ticket counters, baggage-handling areas, and waiting rooms, must be expanded to meet growing market requirements

· Marketing factors. Marketing factors include characteristics such as market size, trip length, time zones involved, and proximity of the airport to the market served

Equipment Maintenance

The primary purpose of the maintenance organization of an airline is to provide a safe, salable aircraft for every schedule striving fir a number of maintenance efficiency goals:

· Minimize aircraft out-of-service time

· Use up time allowable on aircraft and parts between overhauls

· Seek optimum utilization of personnel and even workload

· Maximize utilization of facilities

Maintenance efficiency goals:

· Out-of-service time. Because the profitability of an aircraft depends to a large extent on its daily utilization or availability, the carrier must do everything it can to design a maintenance system that provides a high standard of maintenance yet minimizes out-of-service time

· Allowable time. The carrier should utilize the maximum time allowable in the various inspection and overhaul programs

· Personnel and workload. In performing any inspection, repair, or overhaul, the carrier requires either FAA-licensed personnel or highly trained specialists – an airline needs to optimize personnel workload

· Use of facilities. The carrier must utilize facilities to the maximum extent possible, because of its substantial investment in buildings, tooling, and specialized equipment

Flight Operations and Crew Scheduling

The following operational factors are important in schedule planning: Airport runway lengths Aircraft fuel capacity Habitual adverse weather Air traffic control and routings Crew time limits Employee agreements

Ground Operations and Facility Limitations

The objective of ground service is to accommodate as many flights a possible and as efficiently as possible, consistent with physical limitations and prudent utilization of personnel and equipment, considering factors such as: Are there enough gate positions for the number of planes on the ground simultaneously? Is there adequate ticket-counter space to handle the passengers expeditiously? Is sufficient time provided for on-line or interline transfer of passengers, baggage, mail, and cargo? Can the planned flights be handled efficiently by the present level of ticket-counter, ramp, and food service personnel? Is there ground equipment of the right type? Should the carrier contract these services from another carrier because of the small number of flights? Does the proposed schedule overtax food service facilities?

The schedule planner’s most important function is to evaluate partially conflicting objectives and come out with the optimal balance between:

· Determining the size of a given market and projecting its future growth

· Estimating the effect of planned product changes on the size of the total market and on the carrier’s own share of the market

· Attempting to forecast what the competition may do and developing a plan of action to meet such competitive thrusts

· Estimating the costs and revenues of the alternative plans of action to determine which will be profitable

Schedule Planning and Coordination

Many airline marketing problems are unique such as:

· The problem of traffic flow

· The sensitivity of schedule salability to even minor differences in departure times or other factors

· The operational difficulty of accomplishing schedule adjustments as desired, because of problems of time zones, station personnel, equipment turnaround, and the chain reaction effect

· The financial leverage of load factors

Schedule salability: Schedule convenience ranks high among the competitive elements affecting the traveler’s choice of an airline. Schedule changes should be made with caution. Many aspects of schedule adjustments are rigidly governed by specific regulatory or contractual requirements, such as those relating to maintenance of equipment, and working conditions of flight crews.  Time Zones. are an important factor affecting schedule actions. The fact that we gain three hours on the clock going westbound and lose three hours coming eastbound has a major impact on scheduling a jet fleet. Still another factor that affects scheduling is the need to minimize the peaking of personnel and ground equipment.  An airline can find itself in the frustrating position of having equipment sitting idle on the ground at some station, with enough time available to fly the plane to some other point and back, but without enough time on the ground at the other point for adequate turn time Chain reaction effect requiring many other schedule changes can occur

Load-Factor Leverage: One of the unfortunate facts of the airline business is that the carriers produce revenue passenger miles but sell available seat-miles—hence the importance of load factors Costs of operating a schedule vary only slightly as load factor changes, whereas revenue varies in direct proportion to changes in load factor

Equipment Assignment and Types of Schedules

The scheduling department will generally refer to aircraft throughout the system as being operated in either in-service or out-of-service use:

· In-service use refers to those aircraft being flown on scheduled service, on an extra section (unusual number of passengers), or as a charter flight

· Out-of-service use refers to those aircraft, temporarily assigned for major overhaul, a maintenance check, flight training, special projects, or line reserves (reserve aircraft in event of problems)

Airlines use four basic schedule types in assigning their equipment:

· Skip-stop Skip-stop scheduling refers to the practice of providing service to points A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and so forth by scheduling flights in the following manner: A–C–E–G or A–D–G, or similar combinations in which one or more of the intermediate stations are “skipped”

· Local service shorter-range aircraft make all stops on a segment and connect at larger intermediate stations with long-range aircraft

· Cross-connections (hub and spoke)  the traditional model of legacy carriers, channeling traffic through hub

· Nonstops

Data and Other Limitations in Airline Scheduling

Since the early 1980s, sophisticated computer programs, which use complex mathematical algorithms, have been developed to address the complete scheduling task Although detailed traffic data are available on-line, historically, airline scheduling has been performed with limited sources of traffic data The DOT forms 41, T-100, and Ten Percent Surveys of Domestic and International Traffic are basic schedule planning and route analysis tools Organizations such as IATA and ICAO collect highly aggregated information that is generally not available for years

There has been an aviation professional shortage for the past several years. The Pandemic has has had profound impacts as well. Recent news has highlighted the schedule disruptions as the system has moved towards more normal conditions. The October 23 issue of Aviation Week featured an article on airline pilot supply that you might find interesting as there is a discussion of a global economic outlook for the industry.  I am providing a link to the article but to read it you may have to sign up for a free Aviation Week account.  The publication is one of the most respected in the industry so if you have an interest you might find the online publication useful: Here's a link to the article:

Aviation Week

Assignment Questions Module 10 &11

Develop a paper that contains a discussion of the following from the previous module:

1. Develop definitions for each of the acronyms on the previous assignment page.

2. Choose a drone manufacturer and develop an assessment of the products offered by the company. What is its target market and describe a value proposition for one of its offerings.

3. Choose a particular drone from one of the companies and describe the system components, and specifications. Be sure to describe the major parts (props, motors, flight controller, camera, etc.). 

4. Discuss and describe (at least 3) remotely piloted drone business application areas.

5. Discuss and describe (at least 2) autonomous drone application areas. 

6. Describe the process of becoming an FAA certified Remote Pilot.

7. The college is currently developing a 4 course drone certificate program that will be further developed into a unmanned (uncrewed) degree program. The certificate courses will include weather, drone operation, drone applications, and the FAA UAG exam.  Given the material presented here and assuming you were interested in getting your remote pilot certificate what drone application areas would you be interesed in. 

8. Choose one of the videos from the assignments page and provide a detailed summary and describe what you learned from it. 

* Note this is intended for you to develop the major outline elements for your your final paper*

For the industry segment and company you have selected:

8a. Develop a Porter forces assessment for the aviation industry you selected and be sure to include a definition of the industry you are examining: examples include low-cost, legacy, regional or a combination/subset of the three, cargo et cetera..  

8b. Take a look at the following business model canvas presentations for Southwest :

· Southwest Case Study  (Links to an external site.)

· Southwest Canvas Text   (Links to an external site.)

Develop a short discussion of the elements of the southwest canvas business model and use the methodology to develop a similar business model for the company you selected within the your industry segment..

These 10 questions are to be thoroughly answered in the discussion paper. Paper must be 9-10 pages.

General Paper/Essay Information

1. Your paper should be 9-10 pages  of double spaced text in a 12 point font with a ragged right margin. Title page and references , and figures and graphs do not count.

2. Your paper should be a Microsoft Word Document. The filename should be: yourlastname.docx

3. Do not use wikepedia, investepedia, cliff notes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. as sources if you do your grade will be reduced.

4. Your paper should have a title page that, in addition to the title (Use Paper1, Paper 2, etc. as the title), includes your name and email address.

5. Your paper  should cite material that you use in your text and have references.

6. The paper should not be copied text from other sources; it should be in your own words. Your report will be run through a plagiarism checker ( http://turnitin.com/static/plagiarism.html  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ).

7. If you require guidance on text organization and want a style guide to follow you should use the APA style guide (http://apastyle.apa.org (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ). Please note that there is no need for an abstract or lists of tables and figures or a table of contents.

8. Each essay should be turned into the UWF eLearning assignment folder (dropbox) for that essay by the deadline.

9. Generally I take 10 days to grade your essay (The first grade will be sooner so that you can see that you are meeting expectations).

10. Your grade will be a numeric score. Generally if you get a 95 if everything was fine, that is you answered all the required questions in sufficient detail and correctly so that you get full credit (for an exceptional essay it is possible to earn a 100). If your score is anything less than a 95 then something was lacking: insufficinet detail, errors, no references and citations, required content left out etc. I do not reduce your score for style. If you want info about your score feel free to email me with questions and I will provide you with additional information about your work. You can also check out the rubric I use for grading